Inkjet printers are now very common and affordable and allow one to obtain decent print quality. They are used in home printing, office printing and commercial printing. The growth of inkjet printing is the result of a number of factors including reductions in cost of inkjet printers and improvements in print resolution and overall print quality. A continued demand in inkjet printing has resulted in the need to produce images of high quality, high permanence and high durability while maintaining a reasonable cost.
One particular area of interest for achieving the above goals is the modification of the surface of pigments for enhancing the properties of these pigments for use in, for example, inkjet printing. Surface incompatibilities among pigments are present because of the variation in, for example, the chemical composition among pigments and because of the variation in the nature of processing techniques employed by manufacturers. The surface of pigments contains a variety of different functional groups, and the types of groups present depend on the specific class of pigment.
Various techniques are known for changing the surface properties of pigments. While it is known to encapsulate pigments in polymers, the choices of polymeric materials are limited by the process conditions and, although encapsulation can be achieved, the encapsulating layers are almost always different.